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Rating: Anyone who has read some of my previous reviews knows that I am rather subdued and that, at most, I get excited when there is something particularly beautiful to describe. Rarely do I speak or write about cinema angrily or, as today, furiously.
Lights Out by David Sandberg. One of the most talked-about horror films of the recent cinema season, alongside It Follows, which I still need to catch up on, and The Witch, one of the very few masterpieces of horror cinema in the 2000s (at least among those produced in the West), revealed itself to me as one of the most poorly made genre products I have ever seen. A waste of time of the brief, at least on paper, duration of about 1 hour and 20 minutes, where cliché after cliché follows (which I had hoped would have vanished into the blackest oblivion), whose protagonists are among the stupidest and most irritating ever created, not to mention among the dullest and flattest.
The basic idea could even be cute: a mysterious entity that only manifests in the dark and disappears when illuminated haunts a family (the names of the family members I can't even remember, just to show the overall dullness of this "film"). Not among the most original ideas but not the usual story either. However, the writer's gimmicks take this cute idea and turn it into the usual, umpteenth, unbearable film we are now accustomed to: slamming doors, lights going out, and BOO! the ugly and bad monster screaming in your face.
There is not the slightest atmosphere; the air you breathe is that of a normal movie where, however, occasionally, the music and screams rape your ears. That's it. Nothing more. This is the terrible disease that has plagued horror cinema of the 2000s: fear has given way to shock (except in a few, very rare, cases). Two concepts that, on a first and superficial analysis, might seem pretty similar. But, in reality, they are profoundly different: fear is that thing that grows slowly inside you, it’s that monster weighing on your shoulders throughout the movie, it's that rotten seed that installs in your head and takes root, haunting you for days, making you look around with suspicion and anxiety. Shock is when they pop a balloon next to your ear: you jump out of your seat, okay... your heart races, okay. But it doesn't give you any deep emotion other than irritation.
I don't want to be that nostalgic cinephile who says "movies were better in the old days," also because this is quite often a rather wrong statement (and because not even at 22 can I afford this luxury). But I will say one thing: I am tired of the usual creaking doors, ear-splitting music, and ugly monsters screaming in close-up. I want fear, I want that unpleasant feeling that a true horror film should provoke. I want to have sleepless nights.
Forgive this outburst of mine, but as a well-known video game channel on YouTube says, "things need to be said." I needed to vent somehow, and the review of this contemporary cinematic abortion seemed like the perfect opportunity.
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